Filed under: Advertising, Agency Culture, Attitude & Aptitude, Authenticity, Brand, Communication Strategy, Context, Creative Development, Creativity, Culture, Design, Emotion, Imagination, Innocence, Innovation, Insight, Internet, Planning, Point Of View, R/GA, Relevance, Resonance
I am unashamedly a believer in brand.
I know there is a huge amount of talk about its commercial value, but – like the talk about whether we need ‘insights’ – there is plenty of evidence to suggest it continues to drive companies growth and revenue.
And while there are accademics, like Byron Sharp, who have proven people are far less loyal than they claim, the fact remains that loyalty – whether emotional or transactional – has significant value in building sustainable success for a brand.
But here’s the thing many brand owners forget.
To stand any chance of loyalty from your audience you need to be loyal to them.
Continuously.
It’s not good enough to simply offer discounts and early access.
Sure, that can help, but audiences know exactly why you’re doing it.
Real loyalty – by which I mean there is an almost irrational connection to a brand – is born from brands acting in ways that prove why people should care and keep believing in you.
Behaviour not just words.
Progress over the comfort of repetition.
Authenticity not just chasing popularity.
Telling beautiful stories not just spouting facts or contrived ‘ads’.
As I said, there are some marketers who say none of this matters in a world where digital enables them to have ‘direct to consumer’ relationships at a fraction of the cost of brand building.
I get it. It’s quick and it can be powerful which explains why every day there seems to be a new company claiming it will disrupt the category.
But where they go wrong is not realising disruption without distinction [ie: brand building] doesn’t create long term sustainable value, it just creates new commoditization.
In such an extremely competitive, highly-pressured, fast moving world, I would argue that brand has never been so important to stand a chance of having a stronger future.
And while this might all sound hypocritical given I work for a company who is trying to invent the future of marketing – which includes building new ways to have D2C relationships for clients, finding new ways to interact with subcultures through digital and passionately believes in disrupting categories – the fact is we never do this without an obsessive focus on the authenticity of the brand and how we can help it create the future culture wants to follow rather than just exploiting the offers of the present.
For me, the real issue is we are seeing is companies wanting all the good bits of brand loyalty without much of the effort, for which I leave them with this story I heard when living in China.
The successful farmer plants their seeds and nurtures them in the knowledge that when it comes time to harvest, their crop is bigger and healthier. It takes time, but it is always worth it.
Filed under: A Bit Of Inspiration, Attitude & Aptitude, Authenticity, Comment, Culture, Dad, Daddyhood, Emotion, Empathy, Family, Home, Jill, Love, Mum, Mum & Dad, My Fatherhood, Nottingham, Otis, Paul, Resonance
So the time has come to close the door on the house I grew up in for one final time.
I’ve written the reasons for why this is happening in the past – as I have the reasons why the house was, and always will be, be so important to me – but it is the beginning of a new chapter for my family and my Mum and Dad would be so happy.
Anyway, we went to visit her one final time.
While the garden remained pretty much as my parents left it – thanks to us having a gardener visit every fortnight for the past 4 years [and we’ve taken a couple of things from there to plant in our new home so we will forever be connected] – going into the actual house was a very different feeling.
Part of it was because there was nothing in it.
No furniture.
No people.
No noise.
And so the overall effect was the house felt smaller … more fragile … and yet, as I walked through each room, there were so many emotions going through me.
As I watched my son run through the place holding his toys, I could see me – probably at his age – doing the same.
I saw where my Raleigh Grifter was waiting for me in 1989, on Christmas day.
I could see where my Dad – and then Mum – would sit in the lounge, on their rocking chair.
I could hear my Dad shouting ‘it’s ready’ from the kitchen our Saturday Beefburger was ready for scoffing down.
I could see my old clock radio when I was in the ‘small bedroom’ and my big stereo when I got ‘upgraded’ to the bigger room.
I could see the bed Mum and Dad slept in … where I would sit by them and chat throughout my time in the house.
Mum and Dad’s bedroom was especially poignant to me.
Regardless what happens in the future, it will always be ‘their room’ as they used for the entire time they were alive [and I was around].
Below is a photo of their empty bedroom that I took.
I’ve superimposed another photo of Otis that I took on the day after Mum died.
He’d just flown with his Mum overnight from Shanghai and he’s lying on the side Mum used to sleep on, looking at a painting of a mother and her child that hung above her bed.
He never got to meet her in person – he was supposed to a couple of weeks later when she recovered from her operation.
Alas it didn’t work out that way which is why this photo is so precious to me and why I feel, in a weird way, they did get to be together – hugging each other tight – if only for a second.
Another thing that got me, was when I went to the garage.
When we were having the house refurbished because we wanted to help a family live in a good area, we wrote a message on the wall about how much that house meant to us.
Well, when we checked at the weekend, we saw the tenants had left their own note and I have to say – it got to me because while my life is moving on, it was built in those 4 walls and I hope it does the same for anyone and everyone who lives there.
Thank you Mum.
Thank you Dad.
Thank you house … you will always be treasured.
Filed under: A Bit Of Inspiration, Advertising, Attitude & Aptitude, Brand Suicide, Crap Campaigns In History, Crap Marketing Ideas From History!, Crap Products In History, Embarrassing Moments, Fake Attitude, Scam
Ladies and gentlemen.
Boys and girls.
We have reached ‘peak hipster’ …
A monocle.
A bloody monocle.
It was bad enough when people started wearing glasses without lenses in but this … THIS!!!
And they say ‘splendid clear reading vision, when you need it’
What the hell does that even mean?
Splendid clear reading vision.
How different is that from clear reading vision.
And sure you need that all the bloody time …
I cannot tell you how angry this has made me and it’s only because they had the self awareness to add the word ‘madness’ to their website that I won’t turn up to their store with a weapon, which – given the period of time they are trying to bring back – would probably be pistols at dawn.
Filed under: A Bit Of Inspiration, Advertising, Agency Culture, Attitude & Aptitude, Comment, Creativity, Culture, Immaturity, Professionalism, R/GA, Resonance
Last year, when I joined R/GA, I wasted my sons inheritance by having an array of stickers made for the team.
Of course I did it under the guise of expressing our planning philosophy and approach, but really it was so they could cover their laptops in them like the vandals I wanted us to become.
Or something.
To be honest, even as tools towards hooliganism, they were still better than the stickers and badges I have had made previously. Even the one’s I did to say goodbye to America.
Well a year has passed and I’m still here [fools] so I thought I’d waste a bit more of Otis’ inheritance by having some old-school tech made for them.
That’s them at the top of this page.
To be honest, I’m still trying to work out the reason for them but I think it has a lot to do with basically being cheap as chips [go on, say it, “like me”] … so cheap in fact, that I had some made for a Mike and Sam – a wonderful creative team here – who have the misfortune of sitting opposite me.
And they say I don’t know how to win friends and influence people.